Sure, Marc-Andre Fleury is one of the most popular players in Penguins history.
His infectious smile and enthusiasm, athletic style, team-first mindset and role on three Stanley Cup-winning teams earned him a following here that will endure long after he's delivered his Hockey Hall of Fame induction speech.
Few players who've pulled on a Penguins sweater have been more beloved by the fans base, or liked and respected by his teammates.
There's just one catch.
Most of the guys Fleury, now with the Blackhawks, played with here have moved on during the four-plus years since he went to Vegas in the 2017 expansion draft.
Unless they've watched a lot of him on TV, the majority of players in the Penguins' lineup for their home opener against the Blackhawks Saturday at 7:08 p.m. might not recognize Fleury should they pass him on the street.
If Bryan Rust, who was injured in the third period of the Penguins' 5-4 loss at Florida Thursday, is unable to play Saturday, the only Penguins likely to face Chicago who shared a locker room with Fleury here will be Kris Letang, Brian Dumoulin, Jake Guentzel and Tristan Jarry. (Jarry dressed for precisely one game during Fleury's final season here, so he qualifies mostly on a technicality.)
Oh, perhaps Fleury will bump into a few other old pals -- Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin come immediately to mind -- in the hallway between the home and visitors locker rooms at PPG Paints Arena, but he's not going to have fond memories of working alongside most of the Penguins who will be launching pucks at him Saturday. And those players will view him as just another opposing goalie to beat.
"The team has changed a lot," Fleury told reporters Friday. "A lot of players are gone, but I still have good friends on the team and the staff."
And, of course, a lot of the paying customers will be emotionally invested in watching him play again.
"The fans are always very welcoming," Fleury said. "I had such a good experience in Pittsburgh. It's fun to go back."
Fleury, it turns out, performs about the same against the Penguins as he does against other clubs.
He is 3-2 in five appearances against them, with a 2.63 goals-against average and .910 save percentage.
His career goals-against average is 2.55 and his save percentage is .913.
• Letang has been quite noticeable through the early days of the season, and with good reason. He leads the Penguins in points (4), average ice time (26:41) hits (8), even-strength points (3) and penalty minutes (4, tied with Kasperi Kapanen). Interestingly, he has logged just two minutes of penalty-killing work, far behind John Marino's team-leading total of seven minutes, 12 seconds and less than any Penguins defenseman except Marcus Pettersson. Letang has, however, gotten 10 minutes, 15 seconds on the power play, most on the team. One stat worth watching: Letang has been credited with just three shots on goal -- only one during a man-advantage -- and the Penguins surely would like to see him get more pucks to the net. He averaged 2.4 shots per game in 2020-21.
• While home openers tend to generate a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, they don't always produce points for the home club. The Penguins are a prominent example of that, having won just nine of their past 19.
• That was, by any measure, an extremely impressive victory the Penguins had in Tampa Tuesday, as they dominated the Lightning, 6-2, in the opener for both teams. It might be, though, that the Penguins got an assist that night from an unlikely ally: History. The past four times a team has raised a banner in front of fans to celebrate a Stanley Cup championship won the previous season, it lost that game. Washington beat Boston in its home opener in 2018, but St. Louis lost to the Capitals in 2019 and the Blues beat the Penguins in 2017. (The Lightning won its home opener in 2021-20, but did not fully raise its banner that night because the pandemic prevented fans from attending.) The likely explanation for those results, other than strong showing by the visiting teams, is that the fanfare and emotion of one last celebration of the previous season's accomplishment before an admiring and appreciative sellout crowd tends to be draining and distracting. The Penguins have two victories, a loss and two ties in their banner-raising games. Before losing to St. Louis in 2017, they defeated Washington (2016) and the New York Rangers (2009) and tied Philadelphia (1991 and 1992).
• There are obvious perils in reading too much into statistics from the first couple of games -- does anyone really expect Danton Heinen or Evan Rodrigues to continue scoring an on 82-goal pace? -- but the Penguins can't be happy about winning just 47.5 percent of their faceoffs so far. Of particular note is that while Teddy Blueger is a strong defensive center and is 14-14 on faceoffs overall, he has won just six of 15 draws n his own end. That success rate has to go up if Mike Sullivan and his staff are to have full confidence in Blueger's line in defensive situations. Then again, the Penguins don't have many viable options, since they are 20-26 on defensive-zone faceoffs and Rodrigues (2-1) is their only player to control more of those than he has lost.
• The Penguins, like most teams, seem to be getting away from morning skates, the relic of an era when coaches wanted to make sure their players got out of bed and force them to sweat out the remnants of any substance on which they might have overindulged the previous evening. These days, when skates happen, they tend to be brief and uneventful. But the one the Penguins are scheduled to conduct Saturday at 10:30 a.m., which they decided to hold after calling off Friday's practice, might be a bit more interesting than most. It should provide some insight on whether Rust will be in uniform against the Blackhawks, as well as whether there's any possibility Crosby will make his 2021-22 debut that night. The Penguins have not announced a target date for Crosby, who is recovering from wrist surgery, to play.
• It's hard to imagine that the Penguins' sellout streak, which has reached 632 regular-season and playoff games, will last much longer. The economic impact of the pandemic, the absence of some of their most prominent players because of medical issues and a franchise-record eight-game home stand might well be the confluence of events that results in something less than a capacity crowd at PPG Paints Arena. (The streak includes games from last season when attendance was limited because of the coronavirus, and excludes the eight for which fans were not allowed into the building.)
• The Penguins' penalty-kill has been perfect -- statistically, if not always artistically -- this season, not allowing a goal in seven shorthanded situations. That has to be encouraging for a coaching staff that has stressed upgrading a penalty-kill that was among the worst in the NHL this season. The only real caveat so far is that the Penguins gave up two goals during six-on-five situations during their victory in Tampa. Those were scored after the Lightning pulled the goalie for an extra attacker, so they are not classified as power-play goals, but they did come while the Penguins were down a man, which obviously is the essence of a power play.
• Having an eight-game home stand hardly is ideal, regardless of when it falls during the season, but the Penguins actually will get a scheduling break Saturday. Chicago will be playing on consecutive days -- it is to face the Devils Friday -- and for the third time in four days, completing a road trip that took the Blackhawks from Colorado to New Jersey to here. Although fatigue shouldn't be a major factor this early in the season, it's conceivable that some of the Blackhawks' legs will get a bit heavy in the third period. The Penguins, incidentally, won't play on consecutive days until Nov. 13-14, when they'll be at Ottawa and Washington, respectively.
• Although the Penguins still regard themselves as serious Stanley Cup contenders, that no longer is a widely held belief in the hockey world. Indeed, most preseason prognostications seemed to have them barely getting into the playoffs, or flat-out failing to qualify. A pretty good indication of how their stock has fallen in recent years was a poll by 14 writers from the league's website, NHL.com. None of those people ranked the Penguins higher than 12th in the league (only two put them there) and no fewer than five left them out of the top 16 entirely. Overall, the Penguins placed 15th, which is pretty much the definition of "middle of the pack" in a 32-team league.